Arkansas Museum of Natural Resources State Park at Smackover has been selected as the recipient of the 2010-2011 Outstanding Resource Management Award by Arkansas State Parks, according to State Parks Director Greg Butts. Arkansas Museum of Natural Resources State Park is located two miles south of Smackover on U.S. 7 and is one of the 52 state parks operated by the State Parks Division, Arkansas Department of Parks and Tourism.

The State Parks Division presents awards annually for park excellence within Arkansas’s state parks system. The awards were announced at the annual business meeting of the park superintendents. This year’s meeting was held September 27-29 at DeGray Lake Resort State Park near Bismarck.

The 2010-2011 awards honor the Park of the Year, Four Region winners, and awards for outstanding park maintenance, hospitality, volunteer program, resource management, interpretive program, and special event.

Greg Butts said, “Superintendent Pamela Beasley and the staff at Arkansas Museum of Natural Resources State Park bring credit to the State of Arkansas with their outstanding work and accomplishments. This award recognizes their efforts and focuses on their exemplary work in resource management over the past year.”

An important part of the day-to-day operation of the Arkansas Museum of Natural Resources (AMNR) State Park is focused on cultural resource management and preservation efforts, which are addressed through careful and thoughtful management and park stewardship. The staff are constantly researching and implementing ways to better protect and preserve the collections in the museum, including preserving the history of Arkansas’s oil and brine industries.

The AMNR staff completed a variety of projects to improve museum collections storage areas. And they completed a collections management manual that is used to monitor all maintenance done to the collections building, the oil field park equipment and artifacts, the museum exhibit gallery, as well as the collection itself.

The collections department received 237 new donated items from 15 donors to include 105 objects, 108 photographs, and 24 archival materials. Over 700 catalog items were recorded. Museum staff continued progress on the oral history collection and have digitized 80 oral histories. Oral histories are essential in preserving Arkansas’s past